“We need to make sure that our health centers are prepared and our clinicians are prepared,” Liebman said. “So that means that there needs to be a shift in terms of not just this emphasis, but some of the funding for it.”
As Becerra left his podium, covered with the sign “Protecting Communities From Extreme Heat,” he disappeared into the library and minutes later departed for Stockton to champion the next issue — lower prescription drug prices — with Democratic Rep. Josh Harder, who represents a competitive Central Valley congressional district.
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Vanessa G. Sánchez | KFF Health News (TNS)
CLARKSBURG, Calif. — On a sunny August morning in this agricultural town, before temperatures soared to 103 degrees, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra stood outside the small public library.
He came to talk about the Biden administration’s efforts to protect farmworkers from extreme heat and wildfire smoke, two emerging public health issues at the forefront of the climate crisis.
“There are still not enough protections for workers that are picking the food that we eat,” Becerra told a group of local reporters and government officials, who outnumbered the farmworkers in the audience.
Becerra, whose father worked in the fields, had just come from visiting women picking grapes who protect themselves from the sun by dressing in sweaters, long pants, and kerchiefs that cover their noses and mouths. The summers are long and intense in Clarksburg, a town of about 300 people along the Sacramento River that supplies California’s wine industry with petite sirah, sauvignon blanc, and other grapes harvested by hundreds of farmhands.
“It’s going to be a hot day,” he added. “But they are still dressed as if it were winter.”
Secretary Xavier Becerra met with members of Líderes Campesinas, a statewide women’s farmworker advocacy organization, to hear about the risks California farmworkers face as weather conditions become more extreme. (Vanessa G. Sánchez/KFF Health News/TNS)
The nation’s top health officer, who is mulling a run for governor, has emerged as one of the Biden administration’s leading voices on climate change, focusing attention on low-income and other marginalized workers, who feel the impacts of extreme weather the most. In March, HHS released voluntary safety guidelines and educational materials that farms can use to protect their workers from smoke and heat.
Becerra’s appearance before reporters in front of the library was brief and scheduled to mark Farmworker Appreciation Day, not far from his home in Sacramento, where his wife, a doctor specializing in high-risk pregnancies, remains at work. He advertised the educational materials on the risks of heat illness and when temperatures might be too high to work. But he acknowledged that there is only so much he can do because workplace protections are overseen by the Department of Labor.
“Much of our jurisdiction doesn’t reach those workers directly,” Becerra acknowledged after meeting with grape pickers. “We owe everyone who is working to put food on our table the best effort to make sure that they are working under the safest conditions.”
His aides distributed a press release that listed a number of resources, including free workplace health investigations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; a training on the dangers of heat and smoke from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Worker Training Program; and planned awards to 77 health care providers in high-need areas, totaling $50 million, from the Health Resources and Services Administration.
A vineyard stretches along the Sacramento River in Northern California. (Vanessa G. Sánchez/KFF Health News/TNS)
Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme heat, which is …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
